Hello and welcome to up to speed.
This week is turning out to be a very big one for camera announcements, Canon gave us
the C200 on wednesday, and now Panasonic have taken the white sheet off their mystery new
cinema camera from NAB.
Meet EVA, or the Panasonic AU-EVA1 to give her her full name.
The big question on peoples lips when they heard Panasonic was giving us an option between
the Varicam LT and the GH5 was its sensor size.
Super 35mm or micro 4/3rds like the gh5 is?
Well this is definitely a super35mm camera, and not only that buts its quite an impressive
one.
We get a 5.7K sensor with a dual native ISO from the varicam line.
An EF mount for canon lenses, 2, 4 or 6 stops of ND filter, 2 XLR inputs, HDMI and SDI,
both of which can do 4K.
Internally in the camera you can record 4K up to 60frames a second, and 2K up to 240
frames a second.
Beyond that, Panasonics press release gets a little unspecific.
For example, they say the camera does 4.2.2 10 bit, but don't specify if thats across
all modes or only in some.
The press release does say it will be 10 bit in 4K though, so hopefully its across all
modes as that would be fantastic.
They also dont specify the codec they are using, although they do say it can go up to
400Mbps.This sounds very similar to the Gh5 as that is getting a firmware update soon
to enable 400 Mbps recording.
This sounds to me like EVA will be using the same codecs and recording capabilities as
the GH5, but with a similar sensor to the Varicam line.
Which I think is a very smart move from Panasonic.
Another area thats a little unspecific right now is its use of SD cards.
Panasonic say SD card recording, but not how many card slots the camera has.
I would imagine it will have 2 though, if there is only 1 card slot it would be a real
disappointment, especially as the GH5 now has dual card slots.
Lets talk a bit about the 5.7K headline spec.
EVA will have a 5.7K sensor and downsample that to get its 4K recording, which is great.
As long as its good downsampling, this should get very detailed 4K results.
But internally, EVA won't actually record any 5.7K footage.
Although, Panasonic have said that in a future update they will enable a 5.7K raw output.
Presumably using the SDI port, although thats purely speculation right now.
The other headline spec thats worth clarifying is the Dual native ISO.
This is a fantastic technology from the Varicam line, where the sensor can either be set to
a native ISO of 800, like most cameras, or set so that its native ISO is 5000.
This means very clean high ISO performance with wide dynamic range.
Theres nothing in the press release to say what the actual ISO ratings will be on EVA,
so its possible it will be different to varicam, possibly ISO 400 and 3200 for example.
All we know for sure is that theres 2.
So, 5.7K sensor, recording 4K 60p in 422 10bit, a 400 Mbps MP4 based codec, dual native ISO.
All in a true video body with XLR ports and built in ND filters.
This could be a very strong competitor to the new Canon C200, and Sony’s fs7 and fs5.
We wont really know much more about the camera until later this year unfortunately.
Panasonic say in the fall, so maybe that means we will see an actual launch at IBC in Amsterdam.
I am very excited to see more details and get my hands on this camera.
But let me know what you think of it in the comments section.
Thanks for watching, and i’ll see you in the next one.